IMPACT OF SERVICE QUALITY ON CUSTOMER SATISFACTION: EVIDENCES FROM THE RESTAURANT INDUSTRY IN PAKISTAN

The purpose of this study is to contribute to the literature of service quality importance in restaurant industry. The study has been based upon the Servqual technique and Dineserv tool of improving the quality by the service providing organizations. The study is undertaken from the perspective of Pakistani Restaurant Industry and the customers' perceptions vis-à-vis restaurant dining. Two variables of Servqual, i.e. Tangibles and Responsiveness, have been examined to demonstrate the significance of service quality on customer satisfaction. The results endorse the importance of enhanced complementary service standards in restaurant industry. Finally, the findings provide an insight for the Pakistani restaurant service providing establishments and suggestion have been made for the caretakers of the industry on ways to improve service quality.marketing; restaurants; servqual; customer satisfaction

Skewed line detection and removal preserving handwritten strokes : a new approach

Text overlapping with lines poses serious problems for the optical character recognition systems. The dilemma becomes crucial for skewed and non-uniform thick line present in the word image. Although detection and removal of the straight underlines has been addressed but still skewed lines removal and restoration of the area after removal of lines persists to be a problem of interest. A new method is proposed to detect and remove skewed and straight line at any position inherited in the word image without characters distortion to avoid restoration stage by preserving strokes. The proposed technique is based on connected component analysis and is equally suitable to remove straight and skewed line from printed and handwritten words. Detailed experiments are conducted on manually filled forms of National Institute of Standard and Technology (NIST) special benchmark database19. Comparisons with other methods available in the literature exhibit potential of the new approach with accuracy up to 95.18%

IMPACT OF SERVICE QUALITY ON CUSTOMER SATISFACTION: EVIDENCES FROM THE RESTAURANT INDUSTRY IN PAKISTAN

The purpose of this study is to contribute to the literature of service qualityimportance in restaurant industry. The study has been based upon theServqual technique and Dineserv tool of improving the quality by the serviceproviding organizations. The study is undertaken from the perspective ofPakistani Restaurant Industry and the customers' perceptions vis-à-visrestaurant dining. Two variables of Servqual, i.e. Tangibles andResponsiveness, have been examined to demonstrate the significance ofservice quality on customer satisfaction. The results endorse the importanceof enhanced complementary service standards in restaurant industry. Finally,the findings provide an insight for the Pakistani restaurant service providingestablishments and suggestion have been made for the caretakers of theindustry on ways to improve service quality

Association of oxidative stress with female infertility - a case control study

Objective: To compare stress markers and reproductive hormones in fertile and infertile females, and to relate the markers with age, duration and cause of infertility, and body mass index..Methods: The case-control study was conducted at Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi, from March 2017 to February 2018. Females aged 16-50 years regardless of ethnic background were recruited from the Australian Concept Infertility Medical Centre, Karachi, and were equally divided into infertile cases group A, and fertile controls group B. Serum follicular stimulating hormone, luteinizing hormone, estradiol, glutathione reductase and cortisol were measured using enzyme-linked innmunosorbent assay. SPSS 19 was used for statistical analysis..Results: There were 328 female subjects divided into two equal groups of 164(50%). Serum luteinizing hormone and cortisol was higher in the group A than in group B (p\u3c0.001). Serum glutathione reductase was low in group A compared to group B (p\u3c0.001). Duration of infertility, serum levels of glutathione reductase and cortisol were also significantly different among infertile females when distributed on the basis of cause of infertility (p\u3c0.05). Serum cortisol had negative correlation with glutathione reductase (p\u3c0.001). Age and body mass index had a positive correlation with serum cortisol (p=0.035; p=0.63), while there was a negative correlation with glutathione reductase (p = -0.732)..Conclusions: Prolonged duration of infertility, age of females and body mass index enhanced the production of stress hormones and decreased antioxidant activity which augmented the risk of infertility

Transforming strategies in the digital era: The role of social media in customer value analysis and crisis management for tourism firms

Social media is gaining popularity nowadays and is increasingly being used by many small and large organisations. Organisations are adopting new social platforms and technologies to achieve their key and effective management strategies. However, there are still opportunities to explore the role of new technologies in developing useful strategies. In current research, the utilisation of technological tools especially social media was examined to improve the customer value analysis in the organisations. Besides, the research of social media use for crisis management is also increasing and the relevant strategies are still being-investigated. To overcome this gap, this research aims to evaluate the impact of the use of social media on customer value analysis and crisis management. To attain this, a detailed questionnaire was adapted from several different studies. Data were collected from a diverse targeted sample of tourism-related firms from all over Malaysia, including hotels, resorts, travel agencies and transportation companies. The model was tested using Smart PLS software and the results were generalised. Overall, this research will add a noteworthy contribution to the literature by highlighting the significance of social media and recognising its urgency during crisis for businesses. It will also help in answering questions regarding the role of social media usage towards customer value analysis and crisis management of organisations in the Malaysian tourism sector. Moreover, the practitioners will use the findings to make strategies for crisis management and build customer value chain